Video Playback

Movick wrote on 8/26/2006, 11:34 PM
Hey All,

Of late, VV5 has been playing back extremely slowly and jerky, even in draft mode. I tried upping the video RAM setting in VV5 properties with no luck. I often create spots with multiple channels up to 20 or more and real-time playback is horrific. I just purchased an external 1.25 TB SATA storage system to relieve the resources burden a storehouse of huge files imposes on a system. I am cleaning house now, and will keep only current projects on my O/S hard drive.

Is an investment in a super nutty fast graphics card going to give appreciable video playback? I've been looking at the e-GeForce 7950 GX2. Currently, my system's pretty decent: Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256 MB, P4 3.2 Gig, 1 Gig RAM. I have a RAID H/D and this thing should pretty much fly. Any hardware pros out there have any recommendations? Do you think a faster graphics card will do it?

Thanks in advance!

Mov

Comments

Movick wrote on 8/26/2006, 11:36 PM
<<Is an investment in a super nutty fast graphics card going to give appreciable video playback?>>

I meant to say appreciably better playback. :-)

Mov
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/26/2006, 11:55 PM
Vegas doesn't use any of the features you'll find on a "super nutty fast graphics card" so there is no point in purchasing one unless you're a gamer or doing deep 3D composition with an application that can take advantage of some features of a very high end graphics card.
You'll likely continue to experience jerky playback if you're using the same hard drive for your OS as you're using for video storage.
Movick wrote on 8/27/2006, 12:24 AM
So moving all my data and video to the external Serial SATA storage should improve this issue? Is it ok to work with video which resides on an external H/D? This storage array ties into my pc with a PCI card and serial ATA cable.

What about memory? Is one Gig ample? Are there any settings in VV5 to speed up playback?

Thanks,

Mov
rmack350 wrote on 8/27/2006, 1:00 AM
Raising your preview ram can actually slow things down if you raise it high enough. This is because it forces Windows to start swapping. Open the task manager and watch the page file. Ideally, it'd grow to some reasonable size and stop.

Moving the data to any disk that is not your system disk should help. Your storage array may be no faster than a single SATA drive if you're just using a single sata cable to connect to it. That's my assumption anyway. Maybe it's possible to get more thoughput on the single sata bus if the array can supply it. I don't know.

It's fine to work with video on an external disk. You'll get whatever throughput the bus supports. Some video file formats need more thoughput than others, of course. DV25 and HDV don't need much but uncompressed AVI's need more than a single disk can provide. There's a tradeoff though. Uncompressed video needs a lot of throughput but less cpu muscle. Vice versa for compressed formats like HDV.

Rob